The man had paused for a moment. Just talking about it had filled him with such exhilaration he was practically shaking.

‘Do you know how killing someone makes you feel, Squirm? Powerful . . . strong . . . special. No one can ever again tell you that you don’t matter because right at that moment you know that you matter more than God.’ ‘The Monster’ moved his head from left to right and as he did so he shivered in a creepy sort of way. ‘You are their God.’

‘The Monster’ had laughed at how spooked Squirm looked.

After that, ‘The Monster’ had locked Squirm back in his cell, telling him that he would see him later that night. That had been hours ago. Squirm had then sat down on his dirty mattress, hugged his legs and not moved from that position since.

The boy’s rational mind didn’t want to believe it but the more he thought about it, the more it all made sense.

Due to his father’s inability to hold down a job, brought on by his struggle with alcohol, they had moved five times in the past three years. Eight times in the past five years, which made making friends a very difficult task and keeping them damn right impossible. That fact alone placed Squirm in a not very desirable category – the category of ‘loner’. He had no friends and, since his mother left them, no family either, with the exception of his father. No one really knew who he was because he’d learned to play the ‘loner’ part terribly well. He kept himself to himself as much as he could, especially in school. He was, in everyone’s eyes, the proverbial ‘invisible boy’ and that fitted his father’s plan like a glove. All he had to do was drop by Squirm’s school to let them know that they had to move again. That was it. Problem solved.

No one would find that odd due to the family history.

No one would ask any questions.

And no one would miss him.

His father could then move to a different city and start a new life as a single, childless man, because ‘the plague’ had finally been removed from his life.

The emptiness Squirm felt inside was so devastating it made him break his promise to himself. Tears came to the boy’s eyes and, alone in his cell, he cried.

Now he knew that no one was coming to save him, because no one was looking for him.

No one had ever been.

Sixty-Seven

Garcia was still in the kitchen when Hunter exited the bedroom and walked back into the living room of apartment two-eleven. He immediately spotted the two evidence bags that Garcia had left on top of the small desk by the window – one holding the red BIC Cristal pen and the other the sheets of white printer paper. As he checked them, the same splinter of excitement that had made the hairs on the back of Garcia’s neck stand on end grabbed hold of Hunter for just a millisecond, but he knew better than to let excitement cloud his objectivity. They needed to get those evidence bags to the forensics lab ASAP.

‘Robert!’ Hunter heard his partner call. ‘Come check this out.’

Hunter placed the evidence bags back on the desk and made his way into the kitchen.

Garcia was standing by the stove, with an urgent look on his face.

‘What have you got?’ Hunter asked.

Garcia flicked the book of matches Hunter’s way and he caught it midair.

‘Have a look inside,’ Garcia urged him.

Hunter thumbed it open and paused. An annotation had been made on the cover’s flipside. Hunter stared at it as if hypnotized, his heart beating just a little bit faster than a moment ago.

The annotation read – Midazolam, 2.5 mg.

‘Do you know what that is?’ Garcia asked.

‘I think it’s an anesthetic,’ Hunter replied, his eyes never leaving the text.

Though Garcia didn’t know the drug, he had guessed it to be some sort of sedative, but that wasn’t what had excited him, or kept Hunter so transfixed.

The handwriting was.

The handwriting that they both had stared at for hours on end over the past few days.

The killer’s.

Sixty-Eight

Hunter and Garcia’s first stop after leaving Mathew Hade’s apartment was the LAPD Scientific Investigation Division’s Criminalistics Lab in El Sereno, East Los Angeles. On their way there, Hunter called Doctor Brian Snyder, the lead forensics agent who had attended Sharon Barnard’s crime scene in Venice. He had just come back from a double homicide scene in Westlake.

Doctor Snyder came out to meet the detectives at the lab’s reception lobby.

‘Detectives,’ he said, shaking their hands. ‘Nice seeing you again. How can I help?’

Hunter gave him a quick summary of everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, before handing him the evidence bags he had with him.

Doctor Snyder studied them for a short moment, his eyes lingering over the book of matches for a little longer than they did the other items.

‘Midazolam,’ he read out loud, his voice full of concern.

‘Do you know what that is?’ Garcia asked.

Doctor Snyder nodded. ‘Yes. Midazolam is a Benzodiazepine-based anesthetic with hypnotic properties.’

Garcia blinked twice.

‘There are three Benzodiazepines in common anesthetic use today,’ he explained. ‘Diazepam, Lorazepam and, especially, Midazolam. It is the most lipid-soluble of the three, which means that it’s the fastest to be absorbed by the body and, therefore, also the quickest acting. Its main properties are sedation, relatively little respiratory and cardiac depression, anti-panic, anti-anxiety, anti-convulsant, and it’s also a very strong, centrally acting muscle relaxant. It will induce unconsciousness, or a hypnotic state, in under thirty seconds, producing a very reliable level of amnesia very similar to the “black hole amnesia” caused by Rohypnol, the rape drug. The patient, or victim, will remember nothing.’

‘So, in short,’ Garcia commented, ‘it’s the perfect drug to quickly immobilize a victim.’

Doctor Snyder agreed with a nod. ‘Or, depending on the dosage, to pacify them enough so they would offer no resistance. A person under a mild dosage of Midazolam would act as if he or she were drunk – very drunk, actually. To a passer-by, a perpetrator dragging a victim in that state would just look like somebody helping a drunken friend. That’s all.’ His gaze returned to the book of matches for an instant. ‘But the dosage described here – two point five milligrams – is more than enough to completely subdue a subject as tall and as heavy as any of us.’

‘How difficult is it to obtain?’ Hunter asked.

‘Not very. Especially with the clandestine sites you find on the net today. If you know where to search, it won’t take long.’

‘Perfect,’ Garcia said.

‘How long do you think it will take to process those, Doc?’ Hunter asked.

The face Doctor Snyder made didn’t fill them with confidence.

‘I can put them through right now with an “urgent” request,’ he told them. ‘And I promise that I’ll do all I can to move them as close to the top of the pile as possible. If I get lucky, I can probably have the result of the handwriting analysis back to you by tomorrow, or the day after.’ He reflexively checked his watch as he mentioned the time frame. ‘As for the rest, I’m really not sure. Maybe two days . . . maybe more.’